Seas of South Africa (16 page)

“Don't worry so much, Katharina. I will be careful.”

Katharina didn't smile. She wasn't reassured at all.

“I
will
be careful. I promise you.”

Her eyes fell onto the floor. She looked lost in thought, as if she were remembering something difficult. I had the feeling she wanted to say more, but wouldn't. She wouldn't interfere with his decisions. She wanted to, but respected him too much. I could tell it was difficult for her. Sheba would have been tougher with me. She would have fixed me with her stare, looked into my future, and tried to convince me to reconsider.

Maybe Katharina wanted to do that with Los. But he was older. And he was very stubborn. Besides, it was his decision to make. It was his life. And he had promised to be careful. Maybe that was enough. Maybe it wasn't so dangerous, after all.

After supper, Los showed me the barn. It was thirty feet long and fifteen feet high—just big enough for building a sub, if the sub were the same size as mine. But Ladysmith was a long way from the sea. You'd have to haul the sub on the road in the middle of the night, the way Ziegfried and I did, and launch early in the morning, to avoid getting a lot of unwanted attention. And you'd need a big truck and a special trailer. It was
so
much work. I didn't think Los knew what he was getting himself into. How could he? Still, I had to try to help. I would feel lousy if I didn't. And who knew anyway, maybe he could do it? After all, how many people could build their own plane, and fly it?

Chapter Nineteen

WE SLEPT IN THE BARN
. There was a wooden landing on one side where we put sleeping bags down and made ourselves comfortable. Hollie and Little Laura huddled together at the foot of my bag. Seaweed slept close by. I was tired, but these days, it seemed harder and harder for me to sleep on a surface that wasn't moving. And it didn't help that Los' snores echoed inside the barn like the wind inside a barrel, but it wasn't as nice as that. In the middle of night, I got up to pee. Hollie raised his head, but I shook mine, so he dropped his and stayed where he was.

I went into the backyard and stood between the trees. It
was a clear night. I stared up at the stars. This was Africa. The night sky spread out its stars differently here. The constellations were different, though I couldn't say exactly how. It made the sky look as foreign as the land, and the land was definitely foreign to me. I didn't know how to describe it except to say that it looked older than time, like the tortoise we had lifted off the road. It was dry, dusty, and tough.

Yet it was oddly full of humour, like the colours and shapes of its animals. And there was anger here, too, unless I had just been at the wrong place at the wrong time. I didn't think so. I remembered the elephant and the hippos. And I remembered the dead pirate. I remembered what he looked like, alive and dead, and the sound of his voice, and the stink of him. He had been filled with anger. And it finally brought him down, like a waterlogged boat. Sometimes, back home, a fisherman would leave his boat in the water too long. Then, one day, it would just sink. I remembered the sound of the scuffling that was his murder. I think I would always remember it. It was the sound of anger and hatred. It was hard to imagine it happening anywhere else. But I supposed it did. Of course it did. Then I remembered the coldness of his heart for locking Little Laura inside the sinking boat. That made me shudder for a moment, as warm as the night was. And then I heard a sound.

Katharina was in the backyard. She was down at the bottom of the fence, near the back of the barn. I didn't think she had seen me. She was looking up at the stars, too. On my way
back to the barn, she saw me. She smiled warmly and came over. “You are not sleeping?”

“I just woke up. I'll go back to sleep.”

She nodded. I bet she didn't say a lot of the things she was thinking. “You like Africa?”

“Yes. It's . . . different, that's for sure.”

“How is it different?”

“I don't know; it's sort of serious and funny at the same time. I think I am just not used to it yet.”

“I think you have already learned something very true about Africa.”

“Maybe. I don't know.”

“Let me ask you something.”

“Okay.”

“How is it you can ride your submarine all over the world like this, with dangers everywhere, and yet here you stand, fit, healthy, and ready to wake up to the next day full of life?”

Her question really surprised me. I didn't know how to answer it. I would have to think about it. “I don't know.”

“I think I can tell you how.”

“How?”

“You have an angel watching over you. I feel it.”

“Really?”

“Yes. There is an energy around you. You have many adventures, but you always survive them, yes?”

“So far.”

She reached out her hand for mine, so I gave it to her. This
time, she didn't squeeze it; she held it gently. She turned it over, opened it, and pulled the palm of her hand slowly over the palm of mine. “You will live for a long time, Alfred. You will look out for many people. Many animals, too.” She raised her eyes and stared at me through her dark braids and beads. Her eyes were warm, but I saw pain in them, too. “Will you look out for him?”

“Who? Los?”

“Yes. He is my peaceful warrior.”

Peaceful warrior? That sounded like a contradiction to me. “What is a peaceful warrior?”

“Someone who is here to wage war against suffering and injustice and apathy.”

“Like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu?”

“Yes, like them. And like you. You are also a peaceful warrior, Alfred.”

“I don't know about that.”

“You are. I see it. But he . . .” She tossed her head towards the barn. “He has already suffered more than you could ever know. It is a testament to the greatness of his spirit that he is still here, building, creating, dreaming, sharing. He has so much inside of him, so much love to share with all the world, if only he can escape his own demons.”

“His demons?”

She stared deeply into my eyes, and I knew that she wasn't going to tell me any more than that.

“Does he not have an angel, too?”

Katharina smiled widely, and her teeth showed in the dark.
“He does.” She looked serious again. “But his path is not as clear as yours. He shouldn't go to Soweto. It is too dangerous for him. But I cannot stop him. I know it. Sometimes, when we interfere with the journey of the ones we love, we cause them even more suffering without knowing it.”

“Oh.”

“Will you go with him?”

“To Soweto?” That sounded dangerous to me.

“I know you cannot protect him from every evil. But the angel that watches over you will watch over him also. Will you go with him?”

“I, uhh . . . I guess so. I have my crew, though.”

“I will keep them safe for you.”

I took a deep breath. “Is it as Los said it is—that everyone leaves Soweto when the national football comes?”

“Mostly everyone. He is right; it is the only time for him to go.”

“Maybe I could go with him then.”

Katharina nodded in the darkness as if we had just made a pact. Then, she took my hand again and pointed up into the sky. “There. Do you see those four stars?”

“Yes.”

“That is the Southern Cross. You cannot see it in the northern hemisphere. Only here.” She gripped my shoulder with her powerful hand, reached over, and planted a kiss on my cheek. “You will always be welcome in my home, Alfred.” Then she returned to the house without a sound.

In the morning, we went out to explore the industrial yards around Ladysmith. Hollie and Little Laura stayed behind with Katharina, who was working at home. She said she had a client coming in, but that it would do her client a world of good to see a small parrot running around the house on the back of a small dog—a different kind of therapy.

Los and I took the motorbike out for a few hours. We tried a junkyard first, then the train yard. Then we snooped around a big tire factory, and then the hospital. There were tanks, for sure, but finding one that was twenty feet long, eight feet in diameter, without serious dents, not rusted out, free for the taking, or not too expensive to buy, was a challenge. They were not exactly lying around waiting for us. We tried riding past farms, small businesses, and a dump. After a few hours, Los was wearing a long face.

“Maybe you should put an ad in the paper, Los.”

“An ad?”

“Yah. If you tell people what you're looking for, they'll call you. The tank you're looking for is probably out there somewhere, but we'll never find it because we don't know where it is. If people know that you're willing to pay for it, they might be willing to sell it, or, they might be happy for you to just take it off their hands, for free. But . . . Los?”

“What?”

“You're going to have to learn to weld.”

“I know. I can cut metal with a torch already, but putting it together is different.”

“Maybe you can take a course.”

“Can't I just learn by myself?”

“No. Not welding. It's too dangerous.”

I was starting to wonder if saying something was too dangerous to Los was like telling a bird that the sky was too high. “It's not only that it's dangerous. There are things you need to know so that it works right. If you don't weld it properly, your sub will fall apart.”

His face grew even longer. “What if the course is too much money?”

“You can use the rest of the rand that I took from the pirates.”

He looked surprised. “Really? You would let me?”

“Why not? It's not my money, anyway. And you're dedicated to helping the environment. I can't think of a better use for it.”

His face brightened. “You are my true friend, Alfred. One day, we will both be in the sea with our submarines.”

“I know. That will be awesome.” Then I had another thought. “Maybe there's enough money that you won't need to go to Soweto for your other tools. Maybe you can just buy new ones here.”

“No. I must go. I must have them.”

Rats. I was hoping we wouldn't have to go. I didn't have a good feeling about it at all. I wondered if I should try harder to change his mind, but didn't know how. He was pretty stubborn. I supposed he had to be stubborn to get where he
was. Still, sometimes there was a fine line between safe actions and unsafe ones, or, as my grandfather would say, between stubbornness and stupidity—my grandfather being the most stubborn person I had ever known. I had been learning about the necessity of safety ever since the day I first stepped into Ziegfried's junkyard. I seriously doubted Los ever gave it much thought.

Chapter Twenty

WE LEFT FRIDAY
, mid-morning. We didn't want
to arrive in Soweto before noon. The middle of the afternoon would be best, when
everyone was expected to be away. And we had to be gone by twilight, when people would
begin to trickle back. By dark, there would be a mass movement of people in the streets.
We had to be long gone by then, Katharina said, if we valued our lives. And I certainly
valued mine.

It was two hundred and fifty miles. Soweto was on the southwest corner of
Johannesburg. But we were coming from the south, so we wouldn't have to pass through the
big city—one of the biggest and most dangerous cities in the world.
Even my guidebook advised avoiding Jo'burg if possible, and said that entering Soweto
without a local guide was basically suicide. This wasn't a part of Africa I was keen to
see. And I'd be glad when we had grabbed the tools and were on our way.

All the same, the road leading north was beautiful. There were mountains
on the horizon, and rocky plateaus that reminded me of pictures of Nevada and
Arizona—places I wanted to visit someday. There were zebras and ostriches too, but no
elephants, giraffes, or hippos. It was very dry. And the further north we went, the
drier it became, and the fewer animals we saw. I knew what Africa would become much
further north because I had seen it before. I had ridden on the back of a camel into the
Sahara Desert when we were in the Mediterranean a year and a half ago. The Sahara was a
world that swallowed whole cities in sand.